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On depiction and expression : two essays in philosophical aesthetics

Thesis

Van der Berg, Servaas de V. (2010-12)

Thesis (MA (Philosophy))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis consists of two essays, each focussing on a current topic in aesthetics in the tradition of
analytic philosophy.
First paper (On depiction)
Given broad consensus that resemblance theories do not do well at explaining depiction, two
alternative approaches have dominated the literature in recent decades: (1) Perceptual accounts try to
ground depiction in the phenomenology of our pictorial experiences; (2) Structural accounts
understand pictures as symbols in pictorial symbol systems. I follow Dominic Lopes in granting that the
two approaches, often interpreted as each other’s rivals, both have merit and are successful in
answering divergent questions about depiction.
After taking stock of the most influential theories from both approaches, I turn to John Kulvicki’s recent
work. He has made surprising progress as a proponent of the structural approach. His attempt to
define depiction in structural terms is groundbreaking and, for the most part, successful. The paper
measures some of his suggestions on picture structure and perception against the well-established
“twofoldness”-thesis of the perceptual theorist on depiction, Richard Wollheim. Wollheim’s theory is
defended and suggestions made to adapt Kulvicki’s theory accordingly.
Second paper (On expression)
Since Frank Sibley’s early papers in the mid-twentieth century, analytic aesthetics has broadened its
field of inquiry to extend past the traditional focus on judgements of beauty or aesthetic merit, to
peripheral terms, concepts, properties and judgements (e.g. of grace, elegance, garishness,
daintiness, dumpiness, etc.). Nick Zangwill gives a traditionalist report of what binds the new, broad
and heterogeneous category of the aesthetic together. He argues that purely evaluative aesthetic
judgements of beauty or ugliness (i.e. “verdicts”) are fundamental. All other aesthetic judgements
derive their evaluative aesthetic nature from them.
In this essay it is argued that Zangwill’s defence of beauty’s supremacy in the category of the
aesthetic, does not do justice to ostensible instances of non-evaluative judgements that ascribe
expressive properties to artworks. Nelson Goodman’s cognitivist theory of expression in art is used as
a foil for Zangwill’s claims.